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Covario Issues its Global Paid Search Spend Analysis for Q4 of 2013

Covario recently release its Global Paid (News - Alert) Search Spend Analysis for Q4 of 2013. The report cites that spending by the company's technology, consumer electronics, and retail clients on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising had gone up by 13 percent from Q3 and seven percent year-over-year. Paid search advertising over mobile devices also saw a rise in spending by 23 percent in Q3, and by 55 percent in Q4 of 2012. Although in Q4, the keyword pricing saw a dip compared to the previous quarter, the average cost-per-click (CPC (News - Alert)) had gone up by 10 percent as compared to same period a year ago.

In a release, Alex Funk, the author of the report and director of global paid media strategy at Covario, said, “CPC pricing has been fluctuating over the past few quarters, something not surprising after the platform overhaul that Google (News - Alert) AdWords went through at the midway point of 2013. On the flipside, ad effectiveness has been a major theme in the region, and we saw a 60 percent improvement in click-through rates (CTRs) compared to a year ago.”

A regional analysis found that in Q4, search spending across the Americas had gone up 17 percent quarter-on-quarter with a nine percent increase year-over-year. In 2014, Funk said that advertisers should allocate a 14 percent budget for PPC; specifically in Latin America. He also suggests that advertisers allocate 80 percent of the regional ad spending to Google, and direct 18 percent to the Yahoo-Bing network.

The EMEA region did experience a weaker overall search spend in Q4 because of2013's front-loaded budgets; they also saw an over dip in CPCs. Quarter-over-quarter spending in the region had gone down by one percent and year-on-year spending had gone down eight percent. Although 91 percent of all search spend in EMEA is via Google, Funk said the largest growth in the region was experienced by Yandex (News - Alert) in Russia and Eastern European countries.

Quarterly search spending across the APAC region saw a five percent rise in Q3, and a 21 percent year-on-year increase. Funk said the annual growth was the result of a 13 percent rise in CTRs and a 20 percent increase in click traffic.

The report found that Baidu, the Chinese search engine, dominated 20 percent of Q4's APAC search budgets; 75 percent was directed towards Google and three percent towards Naver, the South Korea-based search engine. Funk said in 2014, 85 percent of search budgets for the Chinese market should be directed towards Baidu. He said that Naver should be allocated 50 percent of the budget within the South Korean market. The rest of APAC should be split with 80 percent going to Google and 20 percent allocated for Yahoo.

Google currently dominates the search engine market with a share of 84 percent. Advertiser investments in Q4 spending with Google had gone up seven percent from a year ago. The Yahoo-Bing Network, which dominates eight percent of the global paid search spend market also saw a year-over-year quarterly spending increase to 23 percent; this along with a six percent rise from Q3.

Mobile search growth continues to go up with global mobile search advertising rising by 23 percent in Q4 of 2013 compared to Q3; there was a 55 percent year-over year rise. This represents the current 20 percent of total search spending across the globe. The mobile ad spend in Q4 for smartphones was 34 percent while for tablets it was 66 percent.